What's on Your Mind?

You’ve probably felt the thrill that comes with receiving a job offer. You read the congratulatory email, begin to imagine life in your new role, then quickly fill out all the required HR paperwork and receive the necessary equipment. And if all is well, you start preparing for your first day. But what if you find out that the job isn’t real? In the first three quarters of 2024, Americans lost $514 million due to business and job opportunity scams, and the Federal Trade Commission received over 93,000 complaints about this type of fraud. In the worst cases, people have already resigned from their jobs before they realize their new position isn’t real—and suddenl…

With its powerful camera, the French Navy surveillance plane scouring the Baltic Sea zoomed in on a cargo ship plowing the waters below—closer, closer, and closer still until the camera operator could make out details on the vessel’s front deck and smoke pouring from its chimney. The long-range Atlantique 2 aircraft on a new mission for NATO then shifted its high-tech gaze onto another target, and another after that until, after more than five hours on patrol, the plane’s array of sensors had scoped out the bulk of the Baltic—from Germany in the west to Estonia in the northeast, bordering Russia. The flight’s mere presence in the skies above the strategic sea last week,…

The Grammy Awards will look a little bit different this week. Each year, the Recording Academy hosts a multitude of events to welcome the music industry during Grammy week and record labels do the same. However, many institutions have canceled their plans—Universal Music Group, Sony, Spotify, BMG, and Warner Music Group among them—and instead are allocating resources to help those affected by the devastating Los Angeles-area wildfires. The Grammys will still take place on Sunday at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles but now will focus its attention on helping wildfire victims. How will Grammy week differ in 2025? Within days of fires ravaging the Pacific Palisad…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a public health alert regarding Wegmans’s frozen fully cooked chicken breast nuggets. The alert, released on Monday, January 27, highlights concerns that the nuggets may be contaminated with extraneous material, specifically bone fragments, according to a notice on the USDA’s recall page. The FSIS says it became aware of the issue after multiple consumers reported finding such fragments in the chicken, although no injuries have been confirmed related to the product. A recall has not been issued since the product is no longer available for purchase. However, consumers …

Bird flu is forcing farmers to slaughter millions of chickens a month, pushing U.S. egg prices to more than double their cost in the summer of 2023. And it appears there may be no relief in sight, given the surge in demand as Easter approaches. The average price per dozen nationwide hit $4.15 in December. That’s not quite as high as the $4.82 record set two years ago, but the Agriculture Department predicts prices are going to soar another 20% this year. Shoppers in some parts of the country are already paying more than double the average price, or worse, finding empty shelves in their local grocery stores. Organic and cage-free varieties are even more expensive. Some …

Workers at a Whole Foods Market in Pennsylvania voted to unionize on Monday, becoming the first group of employees to pull off a labor win at the Amazon-owned grocery store chain. Employees at the Philadelphia store cast 130 votes—or about 57% of the ballots cast—in favor of joining a local chapter of The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union for the purposes of collective bargaining. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, 100 workers rejected the motion. “This fight is far from over, but today’s victory is an important step forward,” said Wendell Young IV, the president of UFCW Local 1776. “We are ready to bring Wh…

Humility is one of those traits everyone claims to love, but few actually want to practice. In other words, we love interacting with humble people, more than making the effort to come across as humble with others. The reasons for this are well-documented by science, and boil down to: Humans are generally prone to overestimating their skills and abilities, and thinking more highly of themselves than they should We are afraid that exposing our limitations and self-doubt (assuming we are capable of self-awareness in the first place) may weaken our reputation with others There is a temptation to brag or show off in order to persuade others that we are talente…

Back in 2015, the Chicago Bears told Brandon Marshall no. The personable All-Pro receiver had been appearing as an analyst on Showtime’s Inside The NFL on his days off during the previous season, but new Bears management weren’t going to allow it. “Right then, I knew I wouldn’t be a Bear anymore,” Marshall told CBS in 2016. “Because I think that the business of the NFL is growing every single day, and players are being told to stay in a box and just play football, and we’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, not only to grow as men and businessmen but to experience different things.” A lot can change in a decade. This week, the NFL is announcing a new initiat…

Yesterday, shockwaves rippled across the American tech industry after news spread over the weekend about a powerful new large language model (LLM) from China called DeepSeek. News of DeepSeek’s capabilities—not to mention the fact that it is open-source and free for anyone to use and modify—sent U.S. markets reeling, including the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which saw $1 trillion evaporate from its market cap as AI-adjacent stocks such as Nvidia and Broadcom were hit hard. U.S.-listed shares of TSMC, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), also took a dive. But today, some of those stocks are recovering, at least to a degree. Here’s what you need to know about …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Speaking on D.R. Horton’s earnings call last week, CEO Paul Romanowski was asked about geographic housing demand trends and if rising inventory in Florida and Texas was impacting the sales of America’s largest homebuilder. “Some of the [recent] buildup we’ve seen in inventory has had some impact on [our] sales when you look at portions of the Florida market and as well isolated to some of the Texas markets where they saw a significant run-up in valuations,” Romanowski responded. “We’ve seen some moderation there. But generally, as we enter into the s…

Andy Hunter decided something needed to be done about the endless rise of Amazon in 2018—the year that the e-commerce giant surpassed 50% of book sales in the U.S. market. “I was concerned at that rate of growth,” says founder and CEO of Bookshop.org. Hunter did a back of a napkin projection and figured that by 2025, Amazon would have secured an 80% share of the U.S. market. That worried Hunter, who had long worked in the publishing industry, especially when paired with stats showing half of all independent, local bookshops in the country went out of business at the same time as Amazon became ascendant. “I felt very strongly that books are too important to our culture…

Recently, I saved a major exclusive story from nearly getting killed at the eleventh hour. After developing the communications strategy, writing several versions of a pitch that a broader team of external partners would use over the course of the campaign’s phases, and personally intervening when the opportunity was nearly lost after one of the parties involved fumbled, that same party later said to me, “Thanks for your help.” Help. Twenty years in public relations, including over a decade running a successful consultancy, and my strategic leadership was reduced to “help”—a word that carries centuries of loaded meaning for Black women in America. It’s a word that seems …

It’s hard for a designer to get the world’s attention at fashion week. But a year ago, the Maison Margiela show went viral thanks, in large part, to Pat McGrath’s makeup, which made models’ skin look like it was made of glass. The show was theatrical. Creative director John Galliano conjured a dark, ethereal universe apparently inspired by the Belle Époque of the late 1800s, when women had tightly cinched corsets, and voluminous dresses with padding that accentuated their busts and hips. Models, including Gwendoline Christie (second from right), walk the runway during the Maison Margiela Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week, January…

Most upstart companies prepping a new product launch would probably not be thrilled to receive a cease and desist letter from an established giant of their field. But as is readily apparent from its insane packaging (not to mention its insane name), the gummy candy purveyor Rotten is not most companies. Last May, founder and CEO Michael Fisher had his signature gummy worms on hand at the industry’s Sweets & Snacks Expo—and a flyer for a new product: Rotten’s Gummy Cruncheez, which launch today and bear resemblance to Nerds’s uber-popular Gummy Clusters. [Image: Rotten] “Nerds and their parent company Ferrara got wind of the product, took a photo of the flye…